It’s a minor league deal. Colon probably doesn’t even make the team. It’s not going to prevent the Yankees from doing anything they would have otherwise done. But really, the optics of it are not good, as they say.

It’s the Yankees. Everyone overanalyzes what they do. Because of that — and because absolutely nothing else is going on right now — you have to wonder if this could have waited until the questions about their rotation had been resolved. Because coming as it does now, many people are going to presume that this is Cashman’s answer to those questions, and the media calliope is going to start rum-pum-pumming about it. Bartolo Colon would have still been waiting around in a couple of weeks. And if he wasn’t, some other tomato can starter like him would have been. People are now going to bombard Cashman with questions about how the Yankees rotation plans went from Cliff Lee to Bartolo Colon in the space of two months.

I had resisted this line of thinking as it has become more and more popular in recent days, but really, I am now prepared to admit that Cashman is trying to get himself run out of town on a rail. Or, at any rate, signing Bartolo Colon is something I’d do if I wanted such a thing.

Buchholz, 33, was acquired by the Phillies from the Red Sox in December 2016, but he made only two starts before an MRI revealed he had a partial tear of his right flexor pronator mass. He underwent surgery in April and missed the rest of the season.